What Is This Thing Called Science?:

by Alan F. Chalmers

Book Overview

Co-published with the University of Queensland Press. HPC holds rights in North America and U. S. Dependencies. Since its first publication in 1976, Alan Chalmers's highly regarded and widely read... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872204529
• ISBN13: 9780872204522
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Solid Introduction

This clearly written book is a very good introduction to philosophy of science. Based on the authors considerable experience with teaching this subject, it is aimed at advanced undergraduates and can be read profitably by any interested person. Chalmers point of departure is that philosophy of science is an effort to capture what is distinct and distinctly successful as a way of gaining knowledge. Chalmers begins with an examination of naive ideas of science based on simple empiricism, naive positivism, and induction. He shows these quickly and clearly to be misguided. This leads to a set of chapters investigating the idea that theory is the distinguishing feature of science. Chalmers has a nice set of chapters describing critically the approaches of Popper, Kuhn, and Lakatos, all of which are found to have some strengths. Chalmers is equally good on the defects of these approaches, all of which fail to capture crucial aspects of scientific knowledge and progress. A similar chapter is devoted to Paul Feyerabend's attack on scientific knowledge. Chalmers follows with chapters on other, recent approaches including Bayesian views and the "new experimentalism." The latter does much better at describing progression of scientific knowledge. Chalmers then concludes with chapters on the nature of scientific laws and a sensible discussion of realism versus anti-realism. A consistent feature of this book is use of historical example, particularly from physics, to explore philosophical issues. The bibliography is decent.

Introspection

I disagree with Chalmers. He admits to the reader on page 169 that he believes the philosophy of science, and therefore this book, is of no help to scientists. This claim he supports by stating his book primarily assults our societal ideologies of science (i.e. either an unwavering association of science with truth, or an impenetrable opinion that science is simply a buffet of ideas to freely choose from). I agree with this statement, but I contend such ideologies exist significantly within the scientific community as well. Perhaps Chalmers assumes his writings won't be internalized by the practicing scientist. This assumption may be true, but my evidence of one data point (me) suggests perhaps scientists (especially apprentices like me) can gain from this book. I recommend this book only to those practicing scientist who have the courage to allow Chalmers' microscope to examine what they believe and how they justify their existance.

An excellent introduction

This was the textbook used when I was an undergraduate. We had a short course on the philosophy of science, and this book is an excellent introduction to the topic. Since then I have gone on to read the texts recommended in the book; if I was first faced with those I am not sure I would have read any. This slim volume provides just enough interest to make it worthwhile to read the might tomes by Popper, Lakatos et al.

Introduction to the Scientific Method

Chalmers's book is the widely read and well-received classical and basic introduction to the epistemology of science. Though this book has important insights that can be applied to the quantitative studies in social science, it is essentially an introduction to the philosophy of natural sciences.Basic concepts and important thinkers are dealt with in order in separate chapters and at the end of each chapter a critique is provided and entries for further reading are provided. The latest edition of the book includes an extensive chapter on Feyerabend and his radical agenda.Besides this the themes covered in the book include observation, experiment, induction, falsification, Kuhn, Popper, Bayes, realism and anti-realism. It is a handy reference work for graduate students and scholars alike who would like to know more about the selection process of hypotheses, how and why hypotheses can be rejected, how important a framework is for any "scientific" research, what it means to have a paradigm shift et cetera. All in all, it is a seminal introduction to the scientific method.

Important introduction into the epistemology of science

Too often sciences are taught without much consideration for their inner workings; emphasis is put on techniques, but not enough on the philosophical considerations that keep sciences honest and as free of dogma as possible. This book by Alan Chalmers successfully and concisely engage us into thinking about the many ways the beliefs in the sciences try to justify themselves, and how some of them fail at doing so. I find this book an essential addition to any science student's bookshelf to critically help her through her studies, and also for professors through whom honest scientists may emerge.